5 Steps To Find Out If Your Business Idea Is Worthwhile

See if it’s already been done. If it has, continue to the next step if you can devise a way to improve upon whatever exists or offer value to the existing player(s) in that market.

Ask others for feedback on your idea. If you can’t find anyone else who thinks your idea is good, head back to the drawing board.

Develop a Minimum Viable Product to give your idea a real-world test using your little corner of the market. This MVP is something that should be feature-complete only in its core functionality. Continue if it turns out to be useful to people.

Start building your brand identity immediately and quickly. Fear those who may merely steal your idea less than those who can execute your idea better (as in beating you to market, making a better product, etc.). You may consider patenting if you have the resources, but it isn’t an end-all, be-all way to protect yourself.

Your brand can’t be developed until you’ve decided on a name, so that’s your first order of business.

As you consider what your name will be, also consider the availability of it in the form of a web domain as well as usernames on social media websites.

Once those are nailed down, put up some sort of landing page as your website so people who look for you online will at least get some minimal sort of teaser.

Website’s done, so go grab your social media accounts of the same name.

Now you can begin to leverage all these resources to build your fan base. Call it a hype machine if that fits what you’re doing; hype machines can be very useful in building a business if done right.

Create a customer acquisition plan and marketing strategy. You may consider directing your efforts toward getting crowdfunded, as one option. Focus on two questions:

How will you get your first customer?

How will you get any subsequent customer?

“[I]t is much easier to build a business around a demand than to build a demand around a business.”